The spy in your living room

Set-top boxes can tell corporate HQ what you watched last night and even what you bought online. And now the interactive TV industry wants to sell that data to advertisers. Sean Dodson on a fight for privacy

The spy in your living room

Set-top boxes can tell corporate HQ what you watched last night and even what you bought online. And now the interactive TV industry wants to sell that data to advertisers. Sean Dodson on a fight for privacy

Touted as a possible replacement for both PC and analogue television, the set-top box that is slowly finding a place in UK homes might look harmless enough. But once you are safely tucked up in bed, the thing switches itself back on, goes online, dials up corporate HQ and reports back every programme you watched and every online purchase made that day.

So claim the various privacy groups calling for regulation of interactive television. Tomorrow, a new piece of legislation aimed at curbing the ability of cable and satellite companies to gather and sell the huge amounts of data that they amass from set-top boxes will be put forward in California.

In what is seen as potentially a landmark bill, senator Debra Bowen will go before the state senate public safety committee in an attempt to force the makers of set-top boxes to ask permission before they continue to monitor their customers' activities.

In response, the industry claims that interactive TV is in its infancy and that any attempt to legislate would stifle the fragile medium. It says that monitoring is necessary to develop personalised advertising. After all, few women want to see ads for baldness cures and few men want ads for tampons.

California's attorney general Bill Lockyer and a number of privacy groups support Bowen - a notable privacy campaigner. But she is up against formidable opposition from companies such as Microsoft and AOL and powerful lobbying groups including the American Electronics Association who have already forked out several hundred thousand dollars in their efforts to fend off her bill.

"It's nobody's business whether you are watching West Wing or Ally McBeal on network television or ordering Toy Story II on pay-per-view," says Bowen.

"Video stores can't sell information about the movies you rent, libraries can't sell the records of the books you check out and cable, satellite and internet video providers shouldn't be able to track and sell information about what you are watching on TV in the privacy of your own home."

Such fears have been growing on both sides of the Atlantic. In March, US privacy groups began reporting that TiVo, the popular set-top box that can digitally record up to 30 hours of television, sends nightly activity reports back to the company via its modem.

Tivo responded to the criticism by stating that it removes the data's personal markers and keeps only "anonymous viewing information." The company also stressed that any of TiVo's users can opt out of the data collection. But to date, few have done so. Bowden's bill aims to reverse the opt-out clause and allow the gathering of data only from viewers who decide to opt in.

Last week, a report published by an Anglo-American pressure group, the centre for digital democracy, laid into the interactive TV industry. Called TV That Watches You: The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television, the intensely partisan report, couched in sub-Orwellian tones, alleges that the next generation of set-top boxes are "deliberately being designed to record the viewing and spending habits of the viewer. Profiles that include one's age, discretionary income, parental status, along with psychographic and demographic data, will be collected, analysed and made available to marketers, advertisers, programmes and others."

One of the report's authors is Brighton-based David Burke, a computer programmer and writer who devotes his spare time to campaigning against the practices of the interactive TV industry. Earlier this year, Burke sneaked into the addressable media coalition, a secretive US trade body representing interactive advertisers. In the hallowed halls of New York's Yale Club, he was forced to pose as a television industry executive just to gain entry after his initial legitimate application was turned down.

"It's hilarious," says Burke. "Here's a bunch of people who call themselves the privacy committee and all they do is sit around and figure out ways to avoid any kind of regulation that protects the privacy of others."

Another of the report's claims is that the interactive TV industry is making wholesale use of "personally identifiable information" - ie names, addresses and credit card numbers. The claim is strongly denied by companies involved in monitoring.

But Burke cites the example of a study that is due to get under way in Aurora, Colorado this autumn. Telecommunications giant AT&T plans to test interactive TV on 42,000 cable subscribers with a view to developing technology that allows advertisers to target ads at individual households.

"People signed up for cable and then their cable company took their names and addresses - personally identifiable information - and went rummaging around any consumer database they could find to get further information about these people as individuals," says Burke. "Now they are targeting advertising at these people."

In recent months, a number of cable and satellite companies and hardware manufacturers have added fuel to the privacy debate by securing patents relating to interactive TV data retention. Many might view the row over monitoring with a wry smile. In the UK, take-up for set-top boxes has been slow. Part of the problem might be that the prototypes haven't been very good. BSkyB's set-top box comes encumbered with a sluggish 28k modem; TiVo's first round of hard-disk recorders does not provide digital TV; and while most platforms support limited web-browsing, the limited access on offer leaves even novice web users frustrated by the sheer lack of choice.

But it's still early days for the fledgling technology. Newer, more sophisticated boxes will be available later this year, from companies as diverse as BSkyB, TiVo and Nokia. Many analysts predict a slow but steady long-term growth in the sector. And let's not forget that the UK government still plans to switch off analogue TV, sometime in the next ten years.